Indeed, some thinkers feared that untrammeled growth would lead to despotism by concentrating wealth; others argued that continued economic expansion was impossible in developed, mature economies like those in Europe and North America. During the Depression, many U.S. New Deal programs actually were anti-productivity; in the hope of driving up farm incomes by artificially creating shortages, farmers were paid to plow under millions of acres of cotton fields and slaughter huge numbers of pigs.
